


Terato Bites

by teratorequests (bravelittletoreador)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Drabble Collection, Fluff, Multi, Terato, Teratophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-27 19:48:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16708912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bravelittletoreador/pseuds/teratorequests
Summary: A few short terato stories, mostly requests, none smutty.





	1. Darkness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A generous and wonderful person sent me a kofi in return for a spooky story with size difference and comfort. I hope this is okay!

The darkness was so thick it congealed, like skin on top of curdled milk. It dripped. It ran down Peter’s back like sweat. It smothered him like a quilt in summer, heavy cotton in his mouth and nose, a weight on his chest that made him wheeze and sputter. The power had been out for an hour. The panic attack had started almost immediately and had yet to ease. He stood stock still in the same place he’d been when they’d gone out, tears on his face, his locked knees aching and trembling, too terrified to move. His head pounded with his pulse and his struggling heart and white static screamed in his brain. Noises came from him, breathless animal sounds he’d never heard himself make before. Fear gripped him like a fist, squeezing the life out of him. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t escape. He knew if he went on being this afraid for much longer it would kill him.  
There was a faint gray light from the moon filtering in through a window. Something moved in the blackness, its shadow just barely discernible against the darkness. Peter flinched, another animal pain noise escaping him. He couldn’t move, but he could feel the thing near him, imagined he could hear its breathing. And with a shuddering, desperate breath, he moved. Not to run, but to reach for it.  
He found a hand, or something like a hand, though larger than any he could imagine, and clung to it with all the strength in his body. He sobbed in relief.  
“Please don’t leave,” he begged, holding on tight. “Please don’t leave me alone.”  
The thing did not take its hand away. It moved closer, and he could feel it looming over him, easily as big as his refrigerator. He couldn’t distinguish much of its shape. It didn’t speak, but as it leaned over him he could understand it anyway. It thought he would be wiser to be afraid of it, rather than the empty darkness.  
“Nothing is worse than being alone in the dark,” Peter choked out, holding on tighter. “Nothing. Please stay.”  
It was still for a moment, silent. But it didn’t leave. Slowly, the hand he was holding curled to hold him back. An arm slipped carefully around his shoulders, cautious, asking permission. Peter moved into it without thinking and the thing in the dark held him close, pressed against soft fur that smelled of dark earth and dusty, closed off places. Peter’s shaking legs gave out and the thing lowered him carefully to the ground and gathered him into its lap. There were more than two arms, some of them hard shelled, sharp and carapaced like an insect. They caged him in safe against the warm bulk of the thing’s body. He could hear its heart beating under his ear, the gentle rush of its breathing, and slowly his own began to match them. Focused on the firm, gentle embrace, it was easier to ignore the darkness around them.  
He was dizzy and exhausted by the long ordeal. It was easy to close his eyes and slip towards sleep. A hand larger then his face was dragging slowly, soothingly, up and down his back. The thing did not speak, but Peter knew all the same that it would stay until the lights returned. Against all reason, the thing seemed to tell him, he was safe.  
“Do you have a name?” Peter asked, because it seemed wrong that he shouldn’t know the name of the person that had saved him.  
“Argos,” the monster whispered, with a voice like an echo in a deep cave and the wind through cobwebs.  
“Thank you Argos,” Peter whispered, and fell asleep.  
When he woke again the power was back and the house was once again full of light. He was lying on the hallway floor, alone. For a moment he assumed he must have hallucinated Argos and everything else. But there were black, muddy footprints in the kitchen longer than his forearm, and they led to the trap door in the pantry through which the crawl space under the house was accessed. Peter debated what to do for a long time. But eventually he stood looking down into the darkness of the crawl space, holding a flashlight and trying to master his nerves.  
“I don’t think I can come down there,” he said. “So if you can come out, Argos, I would appreciate it.”  
Only silence answered him. Peter swallowed a lump in his throat, and clicked on the flashlight.  
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll try.”  
And lowered himself down slowly into the darkness.  
Warm arms greeted him before his feet even touched the mud and he didn’t mind when his flashlight blinked out.  
The darkness didn’t matter. He wasn’t alone.


	2. A Monster That Hates Humans, But Not You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A response to a prompt by teratoadoration on tumblr
> 
> "A monster that hates humans. He despises them, says that they’re greedy and arrogant, the sentient equivalent of cockroaches. He sometimes delivers entire speeches on just how terrible the human race is, before giving a serious “not you, though.”"
> 
> There were lots of responses that took this as romantic, but it's... really not. So this one is sad, sorry.

He hates all humans, but not you, never you. He assures you again and again that you are the exception, that you’re special. That you’re better than the others. And it makes you feel good. Humans are terrible, just like he says. Cruel and judgmental and stubbornly ignorant. But not you, you’re better. Which is why you’re with him.

You laughed when he talked about how awful humans were, shared with him your stories about times other humans had hurt and mistreated you, because he understood. Because he wanted to listen. And he shared those stories with his friends as proof about how right they all were about the vile nature of humans. And you laughed, because you didn’t want to spoil the mood.

But sometimes laughing wasn’t enough. Because he wasn’t laughing. He was angry. Talking about how much humans disgusted him. How they looked, how they behaved, how they breed like insects, how they scurried in their own filth, their clumsy speech and flat flabby faces. But not you, he says when he sees you touching your own face, wondering how he sees you. Not you, never you. You’re different. You’re special.

And you could ignore it at first. It didn’t come up that often after all. Only when he was out with his friends, or when you did something particularly human that he hated. But all the little things pile up over time. The way he never introduces you as his partner to his friends. The way he doesn’t touch you when you’re around other monsters, or only touches you roughly, possessively. The little ways he dismisses your opinions, because you’re only a human after all, and humans are stupid and cruel and ugly. But not you, never you. You’re special.

Except you’re not special, you finally tell him one night.

You’re not different. You’re human. It’s what you are and you can’t change that. He can’t change that, no matter how much he denies it. And if he hates humans, hates the way they look, the way they act, the way they exist, then he hates you. He hates the very core of you. The unchangeable, immutable identity of you. And he tells you he loves you, that you’re not like the other humans. But you are. And it isn’t worth it to go on loving someone who hates you. His appearance could never make him a monster to you. But the hate inside him would turn you monstrous too.

You leave him, and you know he’ll turn his hurt into just another reason to hate humans. To hate you.

And before long you see another human and another monster. Another human laughing with hurt in their eyes. And you take them aside and you tell them:

“Don’t fall in love with something that hates a part of you that you can’t change. Don’t fall in love with something that hates you.”


	3. Alligator Boyfriend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A quick request for someone who wanted an alligator boyfriend with a cajun accent

It was a great house. Getting waterfront property at such a low price was unheard of, especially considering you were a first time buyer. But the seller had seemed very eager to unload it. He hadn’t even questioned your first offer, just taken the down payment and bolted for Florida. His final parting words as he pulled out had just been a muffled warning about gators in the bayou and not to go swimming after dark. You’d figured that was fairly obvious. You weren’t an idiot after all. Your first night there, you fell asleep to the deep, throaty sounds of a bull gator’s mating call somewhere nearby. You find the sound oddly soothing.

The house is a bit isolated. You have to drive forever to get anywhere, and the roads wash out completely when it rains, but it’s worth it to have an actual house all to yourself rather than an apartment. You swim often, not always bothering with a swimsuit. In fact, living alone and so far from everything, you don’t bother with clothes much at all. Lounging on your back deck, basking in the sun and watching the water, is just too luxurious to give up. You love it here.

You hardly ever see the gators the owner was so worried about. Just glimpses of a tail every once in a while, and the grunting mating cry at night. You start to think of the elusive gator as something of a guard dog. Who would dare bother you with something like that lurking in your back yard? Though you knew it was unwise to feed the wild life, you even chucked a raw chicken or two out there now and again, just to encourage it to stay around. Paradoxically, it made you feel safer.

Until the day you slipped on the wet edge of the deck while climbing out of the water. Your head hit the deck hard and you you felt your back hit the water. You watched the green water close over you as your consciousness fled, and the last thing you saw were yellow eyes in the darkness under your deck. What a stupid way to die, you thought. Drowned alone naked in your own backyard, your body gnawed on by an alligator. What would your parents think? Assuming they ever found your body at all.

Except then you woke up, safe and undrowned and not at all gnawed on, laying on your deck. You’d fallen in around noon, but the sun was almost set now, a burning red ember gleaming through the trees. You sat up, rubbing your aching head, and for a moment you were certain you saw something in the water, watching you. Something like a person, but shaped wrong. A second later it had vanished under the water. 

You blamed it on the fading light and the head injury. And you told yourself you must not have fallen into the water at all, you’d just dreamed it while you were unconscious. But you had some trouble believing that. It only got harder as, in the days following, you glimpsed that strange figure again, lurking behind the cypress roots and the spanish moss, half in the water, almost human but not quite. And yellow eyes, gleaming in the dark.

You lay awake at night, listening to the gator’s deep, rolling mating call, wondering. And finally, wondering if you had a death wish, you slipped out of bed and dropped your night clothes on the deck. You slid into the cool water, naked in the moon light, and heard the mating call stop. You closed your eyes, half afraid, and felt huge, heavy hands tipped in dull claws settle on your hips.

“There you are, cher,” a deep voice rumbles in your ear, the accent musical. “It’s about time you answered my call.”

You look into his yellow eyes and you know, one way or another, he’s going to devour you.


	4. Christmas Decorations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very quick little request for some domestic holiday fluff

You planted a knee on the demon’s spiky shoulder, the better to reach the tips of his ferocious branching horns with your glitter paint.

“This is ridiculous,” the incubus muttered, tolerating you climbing him like a jungle gym with admirable patience. “I do not even celebrate this holiday.”

“Well I do. Hand me those bells please.”

“You are not even religious,” he continued to gripe as he picked up the strip of red felt onto which you had hot glued silver reindeer bells and handed it up to you. “You are dating a demon!”

“Christmas isn’t about religion,” you say, rolling your eyes as you string the bells between his festively painted horns. “It’s about staying cheerful during a bleak time of year by spending time with your loved ones and reminding them how much you care about them.”

“And for some reason humiliating me with glitter paint is an integral part of this,” the incubus muttered. You laughed, then slipped on his scales. He caught you at once, swinging you down into his lap before you could fall and hurt yourself. You smiled up at him and reached up to dot red glitter paint on his nose.

“Yes, it is,” you said. “I’m spending time with the person I love most, and you’re showing me how much you care by putting up with it.”

“True,” he said, and bent to nuzzle your cheek, rubbing paint all over you. “If you were not so fiendishly adorable I would have devoured you ages ago. How do you bring out such despicable sentimentality in me so regularly?”

“It’s a gift,” you reply, and kiss him hard enough that he almost doesn’t notice you reaching up to plant a big yellow star on the end of one of his horns.


End file.
